Prowling about Panama

by George A. Miller

CRISTOBAL STREETS

Next to the "spotless town" features of the Zone the visitor is impressed by the smooth-running system through which everything is done. There may be officials who are grouchy and will not take time to answer questions, but I have never met one. The routine of operation and maintenance has succeeded the drive of construction days when Governor Goethals established the famous open house on Sunday morning and received anybody who had anything to say to him. The last black laborer could see the governor if he wished, and many of them did so. The public-be-hanged attitude of occasional small executives in the States is delightfully absent. The machinery of administration outwardly works as smoothly as do the great gates of the locks. On the inner circle there are, of course, problems and sometimes personalities, but they rarely escape from the closets where ghosts are supposed to remain.

FAT CATTLE OF COCLÉ

When the visitor begins to look about and beyond the Canal he becomes aware of the conquered wilderness. Where once was dense and impassable jungle now sweep smooth and verdant hills. One-time fever swamps are now drained meadows, and the never-failing drip from the sanitary oil barrel induces a very high mortality among the mosquitoes. Broad acres of rich jungle lands have been cleared and are now model farms. Over the grassgrown hills wander thousands of fat cattle, increasing in number every year. The jungle of the Canal Zone is a very tame and conquered jungle. The real article lies beyond the line where there is plenty.

It was once thought that the best thing to do with the jungle was to let it run wild after its kind, as a barrier to invasion. A little experimenting proved that an army could cut its way through the jungle so fast that the brush was nothing more than a screen for the advance of the enemy.

If the visitor stays long enough and gets close enough, he will learn of things which might have been done differently on a second trial, but regulation and adjustment have pretty well cleared up the points in question, and, taking it all through, the Canal is as satisfactory and complete a job as the world has ever seen.

The Americans who live on the Zone are an interesting social experiment without knowing it. They form one of the unique communities of the world. Somebody has said that the Zone situation is described by the word "suburban," but that does not express it. Every man lives in a government-furnished house, rent free. Free also is his electric light and a ration of fuel for cooking. Ice is so cheap that it is practically free. He buys everything that he eats and wears in the commissary's stores, where goods are sold to him at cost. So they are—at what they cost him. Prices now do not differ materially from retail figures in the States on the same goods. If housekeeping tires, there are the commissary restaurants, clean and wholesome, always available for good meals at reasonable prices. Good schools are furnished free, of course, for the children. There is a free dispensary where all minor ailments are treated and medicine furnished free. The government hospitals are among the best in the world, and employees' rates are less than the cost of living at home. The Zone man is under Civil Service rules, receives a generous vacation, with a steamer rate to New York so low that it covers little more than his meals en route. The scale of his wages is based on an increase of twenty per cent over the pay for the same class of service in the United States. Cheap household service abounds and is about as satisfactory as household service is anywhere. If he is lonesome, the government clubhouse, with its community life, good recreation, and well-stocked reading room, is always open to him practically without cost; and if he gets tired of the Zone, there is always Panama and the interior country with its never-failing places of interest and exploration.

Here are all the advantages of the socialized state and no workingmen or clerks in all the world are so well paid, or taken care of, as these Americans on the Zone. It is a fine, efficient piece of provision for the men who do the work. Therefore the Zone dweller should be a satisfied and happy man, dreading nothing but the day when he must return to the States.